


The difference between me and you is that I’m not on fire

by dimtraces



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (Sidious bites it), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode AU: s05e16 The Lawless, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 01:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13043655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimtraces/pseuds/dimtraces
Summary: In which the fight in the Mandalorian Palace goes differently, and Maul doesn’t know whether to be grateful or incensed that Rook Kast brought a slugthrower to a ‘saberfight.





	The difference between me and you is that I’m not on fire

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: past child abuse.

Lord Sidious is unfathomable power. He is the crush of a hole in space. A sweet poison you only notice when it has already paralyzed you. Suffocation. Pain. Usually, He would hide His strength in the guise of a hooded and kindly old man, but when He strides into the Sundari throne room and drops the corpses of two hapless fighters, His presence leaks malice and disgust and terrifying might. The whole room burns with it. Maul is not the child he used to be, cowering before his Master; he was forged and annealed by Kenobi’s blade and the filth of his trash planet prison and the mind-burning magic of the woman who called him her son. He has claimed his own apprentice. He is Mand’alor. He has survived worse pain than anything Master dealt and come out stronger for it.

Still, Master enters and Maul’s terror and resolve is almost blotted out by awe.

Lord Sidious is power.

He swats aside Maul’s attempt at dissembling, superior and cold; He chokes Maul and his brother; He allows them to draw their weapons.

He _allows_ them: Maul will fight, Savage will fight, but they both know that this display is but a fraction of His might, the toying of a lothcat with the cockroaches she does not even wish to eat. They will fight, but Lord Sidious has never deigned to share more than a sliver of knowledge with the easily-discarded assassin he trained, and even if he had, Maul will never be more than a child cringing before the most powerful being in the galaxy. He knows that, now, feeling the chill of his Master’s presence. There will be no mercy. Maul will never be enough.

Their lightsabers blaze regardless; if Maul is to die by the hand of a power he will never attain or understand, he will go out the way he has always lived. Desperately clinging to life. Hanging on to the last shreds of connections he was never allowed, and although Maul knows it is beyond foolish to hope—it has always been delusion to believe that he could ever match the awesome power of He who will complete the ancient plans of the Sith—even though it is stupid to fight, still, they will.

Then—

Lord Sidious explodes.

Molten slag is the only thing that Maul feels, splattered and burning across the skin where he still has sensation: torso, arms and face. The legs are gone. They are gone, obliterated from Maul’s proprioception just like when Kenobi cut them off. There was no sensation in the droid legs Maul built for himself on Lotho Minor—Talzin integrated nerve connections in the legs she gifted Maul, and it was the first time he could feel and not just move—and it feels like that time, now, like that time when he had to twist the force into moving the unfeeling metal attached to the wreckage of his body. It feels like that, only worse.

There is a hole torn into Maul’s mind like there is in his body, a bond he hadn’t noticed for its ever-presence suddenly disappeared. A hole in the force, screaming and writhing and unbalanced, or balanced once more, it’s hard to tell. Something was there and it is gone. Power was there, and is no more.

Lord Sidious was power, and He is dead.

Maul’s eyes are open or closed, he does not know. He cannot see. Images etched into his mind, Him cackling and with His lightsabers raised at Maul and then a slugthrower bullet and grimaced disbelief; now, only the afterprint of exploding light drawn forever or possibly just for minutes onto his retinas.

He can’t hear over the ringing in his ears, and then, slowly, sound filters in.

“—ry, there was no time to get you out of the blast radius if he’s really as powerful as—”

 _If_. It rankles Maul. Lord Sidious is power. He is the culmination of eons of planning. He is the Lord of the Sith that Maul pretended at being, ruthless and cunning and able to teach his apprentice through pain, while Maul builds trust. Lord Sidious punished and laughed, while Maul revels in the strange fact that his brother loves him.

Lord Sidious is the most powerful being in the galaxy. _Was_.

Ultimate power, and still he was killed by surprise and arrogance and a well-oiled antique weapon.

“What do we do with the remains?” Through the ringing in his ears, Maul finally manages to place the voice. Rook Kast. The arms nut, and Maul does not know whether to be grateful for her resourcefulness in finding a weapon that ‘saberwielders cannot defend against, or angry. No: power has gone from the galaxy through an underhanded and honorless attack, the ancient plans of the Sith lie in ruin, and Maul lives, panting and shock-blinded and covered in another's guts. His brother lives. It’s a measly trade, and he would make it forever again. “Not that there’s much left. What a shot, eh? Mop up the fleshy bits and the bones and throw them into the garbage?”

“Burn him,” Savage rumbles, close by Maul’s ear. “He will never rot, and his mourners shall never know peace. If there are any.”

“That’s a Jedi funeral,” Maul forces out. “He would despise it.”

He would, probably. Master was unfathomable and honeyed and He never deigned to share more than a sliver of knowledge with His disposable assassin. Maul is aware he never truly knew his Master, not like Lord Sidious knew and molded every corner of Maul’s mind. Still, he’s reasonably sure that it would gall almost as much as dying. The Jedi are weaklings, their traditions profane, and there is a power in appearances that Maul with his canines and his dark-streaked face can only observe from afar. A power that Master, smiling kindly, knew how to harness.

For the Master of the Sith, a Jedi funeral. That’s only barely an improvement over corpse desecration.

“Good,” Savage says. “Ready the bonfire.”

A single soft hand picks slightly cooled slag off Maul’s face. He is lifted, gently, off the ground.

Then, he knows no more.

In his brother’s arms and surrounded by his loyal army, Maul dreams of power. _Once, a Man stood tall before a cowering child and ordered it to run again through a bed of coal and embers. The pain would harden it, would teach it to overcome fear and its body and forge it into the warrior who would burn down the enemies of the Sith, He said, but the child did not understand. It cried. It ran, regardless. It ran because it would do anything for approval, and Master was the only person the child was allowed to meet. That is power: the child loved the Man and so, it obeyed._ It did not know yet the world beyond its cell. It would take years until it learned that there is no love, only control and mastery and power. It never dreamed of the day when Maul would forge his own family: when at last he would meet someone who loves him back.

Lord Sidious’ mourners shall never know peace, but there is only one child in the galaxy that He raised. One child who loved Him.

One person who did not know better, and now does.

_(They will have a feast soon, drunk boisterous warriors dancing around the Sith’s funeral pyre and playing cards for the chance to carry Rook Kast around on their shoulders, she who noticed the intruder and ran, who saved their Mand’alor and slayed the monster. Maul will listen to the revelry, nursing a disapproving glass of water that still tastes of bacta, and then Savage will order their warriors to quiet because the recently injured need rest. He will not sleep tonight. He will sit and watch over Maul’s nightmares.)_

Maul dreams of his Master’s power, terrible and familiar and gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who's still ambivalent about Obi-Wan Kenobi giving Maul a funeral pyre
> 
> Title's from the mclusky song
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
